now, we are upstairs. i've moved from studio 8g upstairs, i'm up on the ninth floor high above the famed studio 8h at 30 rockefeller center. this will be a special edition of "morning joe." walk with me this way. happy morning after! "morning joe" starts right now. ♪

tonight in this election, you, the american people, reminded us that while our road has been hard, while our journey has been long, we have picked ourselves up. we have fought our way back. and we know in our hearts that for the united states of america, the best is yet to come. >> good morning. and welcome to a special edition of "morning joe." it's wednesday, november 7th. the morning after the election. we're live from historic stud studio -- here's willie -- in rockefeller center here in new

york city in front of a great, very awake studio audience. they're wide awake. what's wrong with you people? >> what's wrong with you people? >> have you been up all night? >> unbelievable. >> all right. well, there's just a little news to report this morning. president obama has won a second term in the white house. >> what? you're kidding me. >> this is huge. go ahead. >> around 11:15 last night, the networks put the biggest swing state of the election, ohio, in the president's column. pushing him over the 270 electoral vote threshold. and at this hour, the president has 303 electoral college votes to mitt romney's 206. florida, and my friends, my mustache-loving friends, this is important. florida is the only swing state yet to be called. >> oh, god. he's texting me right now. >> axelrod's texting u ining us

now. >> this is what he says. >> if romney loses florida and north carolina. what's he saying? >> he says a deal's a deal. >> a deal's a deal. >> and that he can't do the show today. he wants to come in thursday when florida will be in and he can enforce the bet. that's gross. >> you're in trouble, by the way. >> what do i do? >> you're going to look awful. >> the vote that's still out does not bode well for your mustache. >> you're saying it's not northwest florida? >> it's not the panhandle. >> let it be said, or the rest of us. >> thursday, the day of reckoning. >> david, i can tell you. come in on thursday, and we'll see. >> where do we stand in florida, joe? >> it's pretty close. the president has a slim lead in the sunshine state, but it's considered to be too close to call. and with florida hanging in the balance, so, too, is my mustache. >> it waents until after 2:00 a.m. that obama was declared the winner of virginia. it was a state he won back in 2008, but with polling just days

before the election showed the race was incredibly close. >> out west, president obama took colorado. he also took nevada. and mika, back east in pennsylvania, a state that one poll had deadlocked over the weekend, we found out it wasn't really deadlocked, was it, now? >> no. >> that was a lie! >> the romney campaign tried to make an 11th hour push there. obama was declared the winner in pennsylvania fairly early in the night. >> and the one battleground state mitt romney did win last night was north carolina, a state that the president took in 2008. and where democrats held their conventions this summer. but this morning the president's also pulling ahead. and this is very important for the white house and a lot of people would say for the way we govern over the next four years. the president's pulling ahead in the popular vote. currently leading nationwide 50%-48%. >> aside from the race for the white house, get this. republicans who had hoped to win control of the senate last night, they were hoping for it, but it was democrats who were able to flip several seats in their favor. we're going to go over all of

those a little later. democrats now hold 51 senate seats to republicans' 45 with races in montana and north dakota still undecided. >> now, you all will remember -- first of all, let me ask, how many people watch "morning joe" every day? that's great. all right. so i'm hoping several because if not, you are a drunk that stumbled in off the street! >> you've been paid a lot of money to be here. >> who's been paid a lot of money to be here. as you remember, since you watch our show, and willie geist will tell you, what have i been saying? the white house, not that important. >> right. >> the senate, who really cares? if we can only keep john boehner as speaker! >> you got him. >> and we did it! >> tanning salons will be doing very well across the country. >> let me tell you something. the orange skin vote came out last night for john boehner. republic republicans did keep control of the house, my friends. essentially leaving the same

political structure in washington that we've enjoyed so much over the past two years. >> that actually is the question before we get to our panel. we have a lot of the same still to come. what will be different and what is the lesson learned from this? >> well, it's status quo. you've got the president sitting in charge of the executive branch, obviously, president obama. the house remains in republicans' control. and the senate -- i think, you know, big pickup for the depths in the senate. all of these key races that were supposed to be so close got blown out. that's really where the soul searching's going to take place. because as i said i've said repeatedly for four years, when you run in the house, you can beat something with nothing. and i'm living proof of that. i did it in 1994. >> he undercuts himself. >> but when you run in the senate and the electorate expands, you've got to be a bit more toward the middle. and when you run for the white house, you'd better have a governing philosophy that will pull bucks county in pennsylvania, that will pull the i-4 corridor and that will pull these swing states.

i'll tell you what -- and i know mark halperin's probably already dug into this -- barack obama won hillsborough county in tampa by 5, 6 percentage points. we republicans know how to win these house races. we have got to expand. we have got to -- and it's not just about ideology. it's, i think, more importantly about our temperament. >> got to take people as they are instead of trying to make them fit into a box. >> also, you know, i've been called a rhino a lot over the past four years by people who actually support bigger government than i. and yet it seals that your conservatism has been twined over the past four years by whether you hated barack obama or not. and guess what? last night, the americans spoke. that's not a governing philosophy. you can't beat something with nothing. republicans have to stand for something and be more constructive, at least temperamentally. like people like mitt romney. i'll tell you who's going to get hammered. >> oh, yeah. >> mark halperin, chris christie

is going to get hammered over the next couple of weeks for doing his job and also for being bipartisan. are you just going to stare at me? >> no. >> have you been up all night? are you tired? >> i was waiting for you to stop speaking. >> you know what? you'll be waiting for a long time. >> how much time do you have? >> i've got till 9:00. >> okay. >> look, the republican party is going to be a circular firing squad for the foreseeable future. they thought they were devastated after barack obama won last time. they thought we'll be ten years in the wilderness. then chris christie won and bob mcdonnell and scott brown won, and then they swept the midterms. they thought, you know what? opposing barack obama, being against everything he's for is enough. well, last night it wasn't near enough. they lost a lot of senate races for the same reason. and now the soul searching and the circular firing squad really commences. chris christie will get a lot of blame. so will mitt romney. but the lack of leaders and ideas and mechanics of how to win elections, it's going to be

ugly. and people like chris christie are going to have to deflect some of the incoming, but they're also going to have to step forward and say what kind of party are we going to be? how are we going to compete in states like -- forget losing the battleground counties for a minute in the battleground states. what about california? if part of you can't get 45% of the vote, much above 40% of the vote in california is not a party about the future. >> and blaming chris christie is exactly maybe what's wrong with the party. you tell me. he should step above it. but can he? >> i think there are a lot of republicans that need to fight back. and you look at this party, jon meacham, this party has lost 5 out of the last 6 elections when it comes to the popular vote. and they had a great victory two years ago, but the same thing happened in 1994. look historically, jon. 1992, bill clinton, a new democrat wins. two years later rejected by a republican revolution. two years later, re-elected. the same thing has happened again.

by republicans who have won. republicans won an historic landslide. we were here two years ago. a lot of unhappy democrats. two years later, they're seen as overreaching and rejected by the american people. >> democrats have shown a greater capacity of the modern era to learn from adversity. and the '94 example is the great one. president bush, in the second half of the term did pretty well in '06 getting the thumping and finally getting rid of rumsfeld, but that was too late. i think we should take a moment and say the president has now joined woodrow wilson, franklin roosevelt and bill clinton as the only democrat to win two terms in the last century, and that's a remarkable achievement. >> it is remarkable. >> to my mind, the question is, as -- i think we should also maybe go ahead and try to ban the word "soul searching," which has already become -- >> i think it needs to be. >> even in the last eight hours, it's become -- >> soul searching. >> how about crushed to pieces

and rebuilt again? >> whatever works. >> you know. >> reconstructive surgery. >> that has a ring to it. >> that could work these days. >> i heard that. they're working on my nose. i think the big thing is what -- which is obvious -- what does he do now? >> what does the president do? >> what does the president do? >> right. >> as you said at the top, not much has changed. >> so what is -- mike barnicle, what's the president's mandate? >> well, the president's mandate is obviously to build upon his election last night and to go to the -- he's got to go. he's got to take the first step because apparently the republicans are so recalcitrant that if they're still living in the world that mitch mcconnell defined four years ago, that our principal objective is to defeat this president, nothing will continue to get done. the president's -- they've got to recognize the fact that he's going to be president of the united states for the next four years.

what you've been talking about, though, would happen to the republican party, it's not rocket science, i don't think. if you walk around, you realize that one of the fundamental issues of the party, joe, is that they basically run in too many states with too many candidates whose premises of fear of the future. you've got to be afraid of young people. you've got to be afraid of gays. you've got to be afraid of immigrants. you've got to be afraid of change. you've got to be afraid of so many things. and they also think, too many of them, not all of them, that the talk radio nation and the talk radio audience is the country. it's not. it's not. it's just not. so they've got to listen. and the president has to extend his hand and say this is the only hand you're going to see for the next four years. i am the president of the united states. and let's do something for the country rather than for our individual parties. >> a couple numbers. >> sure. >> mike barnicle.

a couple numbers on that point, joe. the president won 70, 7-0% of the latino vote last night. >> wow. >> if you look at demographics, obviously, you don't have to be a mathematician or a statistician to figure out that's not a good friend for republicans. and some people are saying this morning at the risk of exaggerating that by 2020, texas, with its population, could become a swing state. that's 38 electoral votes which republicans have chalked up easily. that could change over the next eight years or so. another one that jumped out at me in our exit polling, who do you blame for the economy? the president's entire argument was this is george w. bush's economy. i'm digging us out of the hole. it turns out a large portion of the electorate agreed, 58% in our exit poll said the economy is still george w. bush's fault. and only 42% say it was the president's fault. he won that argument at the end of the day saying i'm digging us out of somebody else's problem. >> so george w. bush is going to have to watch, like,

"sportscenter" for the next eight years. >> yeah. >> before people cut him some slack. >> exactly. he's still getting hammered. 58%. >> he's still getting hammered! let's go through some of the numbers, mika. >> we first want to hear from president obama and mitt romney. obviously in chicago last night at mccormack place, the place went into a frenzy shortly after 11:00 eastern when president obama was declared the winner. we have mitt romney, though, who was gathered with his family in massachusetts, and he spoke as well. so let's hear from both of them. >> i believe in the people of america. i believe that the principles upon which this nation was founded are the only sure guide to a resurgent economy and to renewed greatness. like so many of you, paul and i have left everything on the field. we have given our all to this campaign. i so wish that i had been able to fulfill your hopes to lead the country in a different direction, but the nation shows another leader, and so ann and i join with you to earnestly pray

for him and for this great nation. thank you and god bless america. you guys are the best! thank you so much. >> and whether i earned your vote or not, i have listened to you. i have learned from you. and you've made me a better president. and with your stories and your struggles, i return to the white house more determined and more inspired than ever about the work there is to do and the future that lies ahead. >> mark halperin, the president was gracious last night towards mitt romney. mitt romney also gracious toward the president. but what was your take on the speech? >> the president was not just gracious, he was fantastic. i think that was the best speech of the whole campaign that he gave. it was a lot like his 2004 and 2008 speech. a lot of people were asking where was that speech at the convention? where was that guy? he spent the last year after the budget talks fell apart, he

spent the last year saying i'm going to have to get a new mandate by drawing sharp contra contrast. last night he talked about reaching out. the text and passion of it was fantastic. he's got to prove to republicans from their point of view that he means it and he's going to follow through on it. but i thought lots of stuff was great yesterday. no voting irregularities of any significance, no overtime election. a popular vote winner, also winning the electoral college. and that speech, a great end to the evening saying even though it's a status quo election in terms of who controls the power, this president is putting out his hand to say i'm going to meet with mitt romney. i'm going to go back to what got me elected the first time. fantastic platform to build off. >> we have deadlines and grave consequences if they don't work together, which i think will help the president and republicans come to the table. >> yeah, no doubt about it, they have to work together. at the end of the day, the president and the speaker of the house have got to figure out a way, republicans in congress who control congress who under the

constitution hold the checkbook. >> right. >> they need to figure out how to work together. and jon meacham, you know, history is littered by presidents who win re-election and have failed second terms. presidents that win huge majorities, huge landslides and then collapse. in recent history, lbj in '64, nixon in '72, reagan's second term for the first three years, disastrous with iran-contra. george w. bush's. what does this president do following lessons of the past to make sure that his second term is more effective than his first? >> you're right. the only thing worse than losing a re-election is winning it. historically. but i think reagan's a good example. the iran-contra, enormous blot. but he did have some significant foreign policy wins. he had the '86 tax reform. particularly in those first two

years, he took that 49-state mandate. that's the difference here. remember, he got 49 states. it's almost impossible to imagine now. in 1984. and managed to push through with that. i think that the best second-term presidents are ones who act quickly because there's nothing more -- no one's mentioned 2016 yet. >> we did on the tour. >> okay, good, good. all right. >> we're getting there. >> we didn't game it out past the south carolina primary. >> halperin's got actually a tweet ready. i think it's just perishable. it takes an immense amount -- he needs to move quickly. president bush, in 2005, totally miscalculated, by running on something he had never mentioned, by using something he had never mentioned, social security. the one thing i would say -- barnicle's been -- i hate to say this, kind of brilliant on this point recently. >> really? >> i know, it's hard. >> wow.

>> strange things happen in campaigns. >> yeah. >> about the need for humility in washington to be the president. the one thing i wish the president had said instead of, you've made me a better president, because i've heard you, is i hope you make me a better president. >> yeah. >> not that i'm already there. >> well, okay. mincing words there. >> well, words matter. words matter. >> they do. they do. >> humility, you've talked about humility a lot, the need for the president, the administration to show more humility over the next four years. obviously, i will say it about my own party. my own party needing to show more humility over the next four years, more graciousness. for some reason, people in modern-day america confuse civility with compromise. you and i can disagree. in fact, we can be on opposite ends of the eideological spectrum. committee with still be polite with each other and talk it out and figure out a compromise.

that's not compromising my values. i respect you for what you believe. you respect me for what i believe. but that's not being a sellout. that's actually being constructive and putting the united states of america's best interests against your own political party's best interests. >> yeah, but joe, i mean, you're right. you're absolutely right. go ahead. give it up for joe. >> it's been quite a night. and i'm not exactly looking forward to thursday when axelrod comes in with his mustache. >> what you're talking about isn't just something that began with the election of barack obama four years ago. i mean, there's been a sense within the political system, within the campaign system, as you know, for i'd say 10 to 12 years now. and we referenced this numerous times during the course of this year. where now it's not just enough to defeat your opponent. you have to demonize your opponent as well. >> you have to destroy them, right. >> and you've built a wall. too many candidates in this country at too many levels of running for public office from congress on up to the white house, they build a wall between

themselves and the voters. and the wall is comprised of consultants, and the wall is comprised of the media who pretend to cover these campaigns. >> right. >> but don't really cover the campaigns the way campaigns used to be covered, in terms of the issues that affect real people. all of that has got to change in order to have, i think, a dialogue, a legitimate dialogue between candidates where they stop demonizing one another. >> all right. before we get to break, we have the senate races to cover real quickly. republicans had hoped to win control of the senate last night, but in the end, it was the democrats who were able to flip several seats in their favor. in massachusetts, elizabeth warren reclaimed the senate seat for the democrats, defeating incumbent scott brown. >> she's going to be on the show, by the way. >> she is coming on this morning. >> in connecticut -- and in connecticut, congressman chris murphy actually becomes the youngest member of the united

states senate by defeating former wrestling executive linda mcmahon who poured 42 million more dollars of her own money into the campaign. she outspent murphy 4-1. she's now spent $91 million. >> that might have been a bad buy. >> over the past two years, making sure that republicans didn't pick up a single damn seat in connecticut! >> in indiana, democrat joe donnelly completed his comeback against richard mourdock, winning that state's race. mourdock never recovered after suggesting in a debate last month that if a woman became pregnant by rape it was, quote, something that god intended. >> politics 101, friends, don't say that if you're on the campaign trail. democrats were also able to hold several seats that were considered up for grabs. todd akin's controversial legitimate rape comment, just a little too much for him to overcome in missouri. don't say that either! senator claire mccaskill holds on to her seat. in virginia, tim kaine pulled out a victory against former

senator george allen. >> and in ohio, sherrod brown won a second term in the senate, fending off republican state treasurer josh mandel. and in wisconsin, tammy baldwin becomes america's first openly gay u.s. senator, defeating tommy thompson. >> and the key word there, "openly." and in maine, independent angus king easily won the senate seat. i am not bottled up on that one. >> the most important adverb of the morning. >> the most notable pickup for republicans was in nebraska where deb fischer flipped ben nelson's seat defeating bob kerrey. >> look at these numbers, mike, really quickly before we go to break. that race was getting close, we had heard, near the end. kerrey was catching up. but i'll tell you what, in all of these races, barack obama's

coattails were long. in nebraska, you look at those numbers, you look at massachusetts, it wasn't even close in the end. mitt romney had no coattails. in fact, he had a really detrimental impact on a lot of these candidates. >> mitt romney lost in every state he's ever liver lived. >> that's a bad sign. >> do you think his dog's going to even look at him today? >> you know the guy who's in charge of the research committee for republican senate candidates? >> well, no, i don't, thank god. i mean, seriously. the republicans have worked overtime keeping harry reid -- seriously, as majority leader of the senate two years ago, sharron angle in nevada, christine "i am not a witch" o'donnell, and then this year todd akin and richard mourdock, a lot of soul searching here, friends. >> it's not soul searching. it's more than that. >> everyone should be sitting at

the baccarat table in vegas watching boxing on closed circuit. and instead he's going to be majority leader for a couple more years. >> linda mcmahon announced six years from now, she's going to put $42 million in a dumpster in new haven and light it on fire and just get it over with. >> cut out the middle man. >> cut out the middle man. >> let's cut out the middle man. >> go ahead. >> can i say one more thing about the senate? >> sure, yeah. >> pennsylvania, michigan, florida, ohio, mega states, democratic incumbents breezed to re-election in all four of them. >> oh, my gosh. >> we got all the news in. still ahead on this special post-election edition of "morning joe," the winners of last night, senator-elect tim kaine and massachusetts senator-elect elizabeth warren will be here. also, nbc's tom brokaw and "washington post" columnist eugene robinson. up next, mike allen with the post-election "politico playbook." up next, andrea mitchell, harold ford jr. join the conversation. you're watching "morning joe"

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what's your policy? ♪ sometimes you win ♪ sometimes you lose i want to thank paul ryan for all that he has done for our campaign. and for our country. besides my wife, ann, paul is the best choice i've ever made. and i trust that his intellect and his hard work and his commitment to principle will continue to contribute to the good of our nation. >> i want to thank my friend and partner of the last four years, america's happy warrior, the best vice president anybody could ever hope for, joe biden!

>> all right. welcome back. 29 past the hour. a special post-election edition of "morning joe" live from studio 8h in rockefeller center. >> by the way, look who's here. this is huge. >> joining nous, nbc chief foreign affairs, andrea mitchell. political analyst and former chairman of the republican national committee, michael steele. and msnbc political analyst and visiting professor at nyu, former democratic congressman harold ford jr. and host of "mad money" on cnbc, jim cramer. >> and by the way, andrea mitchell, thank you guys for coming. andrea mitchell came up to me, mika, spoken like a true lawyer, she said, i believe that for you to grow your mustache, the president had to win florida and north carolina. >> so how are we? >> oh, oh. >> i don't think that's true, but i'm going to talk to my

lawy lawyers. but thank you for trying. i think that's supporting. >> i think when axelrod comes on thursday, we ought to try and negotiate with him. and since the new era of bipartisanship has begun -- >> yes. >> -- perhaps he could use your relationship with him as an example. so i will mediate. >> i doubt it. i doubt it very much. >> i think we can get something done. i think i can work it out. >> so harold, what do you think? historic night. >> historic night. hopefully it translates into all the things that have been talked about this morning, especially as it relates to bipartisanship, especially as it relates to a magnanimous tone being struck by both sides. i was most struck by two things, one, the president's tone last night suggests in the most powerful and compelling ways, it was gracious and hopefully republicans match it, although if you listened to the rhetoric from some in the house. in the senate, democrats picked up seats which i think surprised many. and if you look at where the

states were picked up, montana, it looks more like democrats may win that seat. in north dakota, it's a positive thing for the country in many ways. hopefully it translates into us getting a deal around the fiscal cliff, the proverbial tax cuts and sequestration. and i'm hopeful that it sets a tone for energy and immigration to be dealt with which i would imagine, michael, republicans have to be eager to deal with right away. >> michael, let me ask you, two years ago, you were chairman of the republican national committee. >> yep. >> republicans won the largest landslide in recent history. >> yeah. >> nationwide picked up 700 seats across state legislatures. the most republicans picked up in the house since 1946. what happened over the past two years? what caused this collapse? other than, of course, you leaving the rnc. >> well, yeah, that was part of it, i'm sure. >> yeah. >> no, i think part of it was looking back on it, what we inherited was the ash heap of

2006, 2008. and what we discovered was, we stopped talking to people. we stopped communicating values and ideas, accepting people where they were. if you go back and you look at those two years, joe, and you covered my tenure at the rnc just like everybody else, you didn't have conversations about vaginal insertions and -- >> right. >> thank god. >> contraceptions. >> mighty early to be using those words. >> probe. >> pro. >> use the operative word here. >> thank you. >> actually, state-sanctioned probe. you know what? maybe we should just steer it. point taken. >> point taken. no, but the point was, we were talking about the things that people were concerned about. we got off of that conversation, and we got into these other areas where people felt threatened by the language, the tone and how we stopped embracing america as we found it. so i think that was a big part

of the breakdown. and then, of course, just the overall messaging on the economy, just didn't connect. >> didn't connect. andrea. >> there were so many advantages that mitt romney had on the economy going in. i think the jeep ad was a disaster. you have two ceos basically calling him a liar. that did not help in ohio. but i do agree completely with michael about the values. you cannot ignore the values of mainstream americans. you can't ignore women. and you can't ignore the hispanic and minority communities and speak to them the way they were spoken to by some of these candidates, by mourdock, akin, and that became sort of the overwhelming tone. >> even by mitt romney. sorry. >> no doubt about it. craig shirley had said, and i've quoted him, that november football games are won in august. >> yeah. >> well, in this case, you could even say a november game was won

back in the early spring when mitt romney decided that he was going to dart as far right as humanly possible, jim cramer, on immigrati immigration. and he tried to go to the right of rick perry. it may have helped him win votes in the primary in the short run. in the long run, you could see it early last night. the exit polls came in. we heard there were more hispanics voting in virginia this time than four years ago. colorado, more this time than four years ago. mitt romney got crushed by the hispanic vote. if he had had the same percentage of hispanic votes that george w. bush had in 2000 or 2004, he would be president of the united states this morning. >> absolutely. see, andrea's so right. i think romney went mathematic, but remember, you could do all sorts of different kinds of project orca, trying to get the last-minute vote, trying to be -- they call it that, for heaven's sake. but in the end, the arithmetic

was we're a changed country. the country doesn't look like when i grew up. i'm 57 and the country that romney appeals to is long gone. it doesn't look like us. >> you go back, ronald reagan, we always talk about ronald reagan's historic landslide in 1980. mika, you do the demographic breakdown from 1980 and put that in last night's voting group, and ronald reagan would have lost in a landslide. it is a new republican party. this is something that george w. bush and jeb bush saw in 1996, 1998. they warned republicans about it for some time. and last night, they paid a heavy price for not listening. >> they paid the hard way. it is a race you could argue they should have won. >> oh, my gosh. seriously? we had to work overtime to do this! mitt romney said that he and paul ryan left everything on the field? really? >> no. >> not even close! >> they pushed it farther away.

>> what does this mean when so much -- if you remember what mitt romney said the first thing he'd do would be to undo the obama health care plan. does this take that substantively in your mind off the table somewhat, and with so many other important issues including the fiscal cliff, but does now the affordable care act, the supreme court has spoken, the voters have spoken, does this mean that we accept it as law? >> i think so. >> politically. >> i think they fix it around the edges. >> but they were going to. >> you don't ask me what's going to happen over the next four years. you only have to go back to see what happened when we were there. and i've been saying this for two years now. it's identical. again, i'll say it again. in 1992, you had a new democrat come in. he went too far left. in 1994, americans spoke out, moved back to the right. two years later, that republican party went too far right. the american people spoke. and they re-elected that new democrat and gave him another four years. and then the two sides figured out how to work together on

welfare reform, on balancing the budget for the first time in a generation, balancing the budget first time for four years since the 1920s, did a lot of great things. that can happen again. but republicans and democrats need to understand they've got to work together to do it. >> let's go to "politico." with us from headquarters in virginia, chief white house correspondent for "politico," mike allen. and mike, we were trying to skype with you late last night. we were able to skype with my brother in sweden with absolutely no technical problems. >> but not "politico" in arlington. >> but with you it's a disaster. that's all i have to say. good morning, mike. >> good morning and thank you for trying. the shot looked great. your coverage was amazing. thank you very much. we had a good time over at the newseum. we had a watch party with about 1,000 people. >> wow, fantastic! >> what's your takeaway from last night? >> one of our big takeaways is that republicans are going to have to find a new way to get senate candidates. and we've learned that starting

today, top senate leaders are going to be meeting with some of the outside groups around washington to try and get them to serve as a little bit of a screening committee so that they don't get these unelectable candidates. just as mitt romney lost in an unlosable race, as you point out, a number of these senate candidates also lost unlosable races. looking ahead a little bit, here today in washington, we're going to see the battle lines drawn on the if is cal cliff fight. at 3:30 today, speaker boehner is going to go out, and he's going to say that this was a status quo election, a democrat in the white house, democrats in the senate. him, republicans in the house, and that this is a mandate for common ground on tax reform, not a mandate for republicans to cave. the white house is going to say, look. the president went around the country saying how he wanted to fix the fiscal cliff, saying

that he wanted to raise taxes on people who make the most money. and it's no surprise they have a mandate to do it, but speaker boehner drawing a very hard line -- hard opening line saying that he would not forget the $250,000 or more that they've been talking about raising taxes on. he says he wouldn't go for raising taxes on someone who makes $1 million or more. that's not someone who is chastined by last night's results. >> of course, republicans, jim cramer, are going to say the same thing the president says. i've got a mandate because they certainly ran in their seats, promising not to raise taxes. so we're going to have to have some compromise here. how are the markets going to react? >> i think the markets are going to be fine because there was a last-minute surge that brought people into the coal stocks. a couple of very isolated stocks that people felt some naval defense stocks. but the thing i'm worried about here is what i call -- i know chris matthews is here -- the

outlaw josie wales factor. >> great movie. >> yes. remember what they were really about. they thought that the confederacy had won or was going to win. on air last night, while we were getting results, we had people coming on said this is a great romney victory. just wait and see. what was i waiting for? for guam? >> can i just tell you, a lot of us felt like, you know, going into the old peanuts analogy, we were sitting in the pumpkin patch waiting for the great pumpkin to rise. >> i love that. better than josie wales. >> it never came. we heard about that. but you know, jim, i was talking to romney people on saturday. they were really charged. we were talking about this yesterday morning. they believed they were going to win. they had the momentum. >> there was something stirring. >> by sunday night, they were all flat. they had gotten the polls in. they weren't moving in ohio. they weren't moving in pennsylvania. and they felt at that point they were flattened by sandy.

i don't think this race was close enough to be impacted by a hurricane. >> no. >> but that's certainly what they believe. >> chris christie, yes, springsteen's his buddy, and springsteen may have brought him over. i think that people -- i was in ohio a couple weeks ago. you know, there's great wealth in ohio. there are companies that have given out billions of dollars to people in ohio because there's oil and gas everywhere. and the whole northeast ohio was flooded withal abouts of dollars of oil money. those people are not unhappy. >> andrea, we saw it early on, and we were talking about how the right track/wrong track in ohio shifted six months ago. mitt romney, i think, one of the pivotal moments when mitt romney told john kasich, stop bragging about your economy in ohio. ohio was a leading indicator. >> it was a leading indicator. you know, the other thing about that mitigates against agreement is the people who were elected in the house, and they picked up seats. the democrats did miserably. i think you may see a change in leadership on the democratic

side, as a matter of fact. nancy pelosi -- >> would that be good or bad? >> i don't know. she may decide not to run for a leadership position after this particular election. but the point is that these people who have been elected on the house side feel, as you've just said, that they've got a mandate not to compromise. and unless the, you know, the senators who have been trying to do something, coburn and others and people -- rather the -- >> the gang of six. >> the gang of six who can get together, mark warner and lamar alexander and bob corker and very conciliatory statement from -- >> from them. >> from them and from some of the other senators on the republican side last night. >> mike allen, we're talking about mandates. and i can tell you, i don't know if you knew this or not, but i ran for congress. >> oh, my gosh. really? >> harold ford -- >> breaking news. >> breaking news. but when i ran in '94, i ran

against bill clinton, when i ran in '96, i ran against bill clinton. bill clinton got re-elected. but when i went to washington, my mandate was not to follow bill clinton. it was to do what i promised to do on the campaign trail. i think sometimes we do forget, because we're all looking at the big race, that these people that go to congress go there with their own personal mandate with their people, with their 600,000 constituents. that's why we have divided government. that's why we have to compromise. >> well, that's right. and something that makes another impediment to getting a deal is that these people who are coming to congress now are even less beholden to their leaders than ever because they have their own sources of fund-raising, their own sources of media. and so it's much more difficult for speaker boehner to corral those republicans. picking up on andrea's point, another huge impediment to the deal. you know how now have paul ryan coming back to the house. he has more credibility, more

sway with the conservatives than anyone. and now he's probably running for president. and if paul ryan is running for president from the house, he is going to have no incentive to make a deal with president obama. it's a big deal, and it's a factor that could really mitigate against any kind of a quick deal. >> interesting new dynamic there. mike allen, ladies and gentlemen, mike allen. thank you very much. >> mike, thank you. >> great coverage. thank y'all. coming up, chris matthews and mark mckinnon will be here. also, the reverend al sharpton. republican strategist steve schmidt and margaret carlson. andrea mitchell, thank you very much. she was up all night. up all night. >> thank you, andrea. >> thank you, andrea. and who? bye-bye, cramer. thank you so much. jim cramer, everybody. you're watching the special post-election edition of "morning joe" live from studio 8h. we'll be right back.

we have may have battled fiercely, but it's only because we love this country deeply, that we care so strongly about its future. george and lenore to their son, mitt, they have chosen to give back, and that is a legacy that we honor and applaud tonight.

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joe." it is 49 past the hour. joining us now, the host of msnbc's "politics nation," reverend al sharpton. we also have former mccain senior campaign strategist and msnbc political analyst, steve schmidt joins us. and columnist for bloomberg, margaret carlson as well. >> great to have you here. reverend al, talking about last night, what happened? >> i thought it was a great night. >> are you sure? >> obviously, i haven't gone to sleep yet. i mean, i think that when you look at the fact that the president not only won but won big and across the board, i think that now is not the time for just celebration or gloating. i think it's the time to really go where he went in the speech, take the high road, bring the country together, make some hard decisions. i think that those of us on the democratic side need to look at

the fact that it was the extreme on the republican side that really hurt romney, and we cannot be extreme when the president has to make some hard decisions around the debt, around the deficit and all. otherwise we will end up killing him. i think last night's victory should make all sides reflective and now come to the middle and do something big for the country. >> it's a big statement. >> no doubt about it. >> joe, how do they go from a campaign that really didn't talk about the issues that are most important in terms of gravity facing this country? how do we get to the point where they do? how does that happen? >> well, i think at this point we've got a fiscal cliff coming up. >> that will help. >> to your point, i heard savannah guthrie last night on nbc news that 80% of mitt romney's ads were negative attacking barack obama. 85% of barack obama's ads were negative attacking mitt romney. i think at this point, they've

got to reach out. winston churchill said in war, fury, in peace, magazinam ichlm. before republicans can figure out how to deal with the democrats, we've got to figure out how to deal with our own party. think about it, margaret, and you i grew up believing that republicans won presidential races and democrats won, you know, won congress. but in 5 of the last 6 presidential elections, we republicans have lost the popular vote. 5 of the 6 last elections. we're doing something wrong. >> yeah, absolutely. the country is fundamentally changed over the last 5 years. 25 years. in 1988, george herbert walker bush, 60% of the white vote. he gets 400 electoral votes. mitt romney last night, 60% of the white vote. he loses the election. very decisively. so as chairman steele pointed

out, 50,000 latinos turn 18 every month in this country. we cannot write off the fastest growing demographic in this country and hope to remain a national political party. we will be a regional party. we will not be competitive at presidential elections. so when you look at the totality of these results, you look at the fact that we have given away five u.s. senate seats over two election cycles by nominating loons. people who are -- people who are fundamentally manifestly unqualified to be in the united states senate. >> unqualified and unelectable. and you ask people out there -- and i've got to say, it goes also to mitt romney. >> yeah. >> at some point, we've got to start electing people who are good candidates. pat buchanan talks about, quote, political athletes. you know what? you can know the west coast offense, but if you don't have jerry rice to run the west coast offense, if you've got steve schmidt on one wide receiver and

joe scarborough on the other, you're still going to lose! >> there's no doubt about that. let's be clear. >> but we don't -- >> even with montana. >> no more sports analogies. >> it's better for the country, though. >> i'm sorry. >> to have better candidates is better for the country, too. so we shouldn't be afraid of that certainly. but at this point, it was a joke. what we saw. >> these were unforced errors in a way where -- and thanks, joe, that you think the two of us have grown up. >> together. >> together. that, you know, you shouldn't have todd akin and richard mourdock. they shouldn't be winning. they're like sharron angle and christine o'donnell. they didn't learn anything. small groups of the party are managing to take over the party apparatus. look at linda mcmahon in connecticut. win the primary. >> linda mcmahon in connecticut -- and you know this, margaret -- defeated chris shays who would have won last night. two years ago defeated rob simmons who i think would have won two years ago. linda mccamahon cost republican

two senate seats. that's six senate seats. harry reid would be home. >> she tried to buy it twice, she lost it twice. and because it's the party apparatus, it's letting these self-financed or ultra conservative candidate s get through when you know they're not going to make it. >> if you look at the forced retirement of olympia snowe in maine, it's seven. it's extraordinary. so conservatism is a serious governing philosophy that has served this country well. conservatism is not defined who is and who is not conservative should not be defined around who agrees with whatever outrageousness comes out of the mouths of these talk radio hosts. enough is enough. it has done profound damage, and the verdict is in. >> the verdict -- there is no question, the verdict is in.

all of these people that run around calling anybody that can win swing voters a rhino, you all have cost us the majority in the united states senate. get out of the way and let's get main street republicans back there. a reagan republican, as steve schmidt said, in these seven races would have won. this is not the conservatism is not a governing philosophy. it's that lunacy is not a governing philosophy. >> it's not a winning philosophy. i couldn't agree with you more. two quick things to build on reverend sharpton's point. california passed a tax increase last night amid big controversy and big, big opposition. why did they pass it? to pay for education and things that matter. the president frames it around it. maryland passes same-sex marriage, social issues as well, very, very important as you go forward not only with the demographics around race and religion, but if you look at how and what people are accepting socially, young voters critical. >> that has changed a lot since even 2004 when george w. bush

was helped by a slew of marriage equality amendments that went down. >> marriage equality was a big one. i think the other thing going back to steve's point, if you're going to go after really making sure the republican party remains the dominant party, you've got to address issues of women, of latinos, african-americans. people embrace people that embrace them. you can't have issues that are hostile. one of the things that drove a lot of votes, people predicted the african-american vote was going to go down, including on this show yesterday. it went up. but one of the things that drove it was not just that we agreed with the president, was the perception with the voter i.d. laws and others that they were trying to take our vote. >> that's a big story. >> nobody stands in line for five or six hours with fraudulent i.d. >> there you go. all right, reverend al, thank you. still ahead -- >> by the way, the hispanic -- the hispanic vote went up as well.

>> yeah. >> yesterday. in a lot of key states. >> you know, the one thing everybody agrees on, we want the game to be fair. we don't want the refs from green bay. how's that? >> there you go. >> sports analogy. >> we've got to get to a break. still ahead, the winners of two hard-fought senate races from virginia, senator-elect tim kaine and from massachusetts, senator-elect elizabeth warren. plus, national urban league president and ceo, marc morial. willie? >> i've got good seats. i know a guy. i've got a good ticket broker. front row, up here. alexander, who did you vote for? >> obama all the way. >> did anyone in this room not vote for president obama? a smattering of applause. where is he? there we go. five people in the back. excellent. all right, guys. when we come back here to this special edition of "morning joe," we're going to bring in the great chris matthews. on short rest, no less. so look out. we'll be right back to studio 8h

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♪ try to see things my way ♪ do i have to keep on talking till i can't go on ♪ ♪ or see it your way ♪ at the risk of knowing that our love may soon be gone ♪ ♪ we can work it out tonight, you voted for action, not politics as usual. you elected us to focus on your jobs, not ours. and in the coming weeks and months, i am looking forward to reaching out and working with leaders of both parties to meet the challenges we can only solve together. reducing our deficit, reforming our tax code, fixing our immigration system, freeing ourselves from foreign oil. we've got more work to do. but that doesn't mean your work is done.

the role of citizen in our democracy does not end with your vote. america has never been about what can be done for us. it's about what can be done by us together through the hard and frustrating but necessary work of self-government. that's the principle we were founded on. >> good morning and welcome to a special edition of "morning joe." it is wednesday, november 7th. a new day. the morning after the election. we're live from historic studio 8h in rockefeller center here in new york city in front of a live studio audience. a rocket crowd. president obama has won a second term in the white house, remaining the 44th president of the united states. >> around 11:15 last night, the networks put the biggest swing state of the election, ohio, ohio, ohio, in the president's column. that pushed him over the 270 electoral vote threshold.

at this hour, president obama has 303 electoral college votes to mitt romney's 206. florida is the only state yet to be called. >> president obama has a slim lead in the sunshine state, but it's considered too close to call. and with florida hanging in the balance, that might mean that you have to grow a mustache. >> we'll see. we shall see. it wasn't until after 2:00 a.m. that the president was declared the winner of virginia. it was a state he won in 2008. but where polling just days before the election showed that the race was incredibly close. >> out west, obama took colorado and also prevailed in nevada. and in pennsylvania where the romney campaign was looking to make an 11th hour push, president obama was declared the winner. there fairly early in the night. >> the only big battleground state that mitt romney won last night was north carolina, a state the president took in 2008 and where democrats held their convention this summer. >> go ahead. >> this morning, the president is also pulling ahead in the

popular vote, currently leading nationwide, 50%-48%. >> and aside from the race for the white house, republicans hoped to win control of the senate last night, but it was democrats who were able to flip several seats in their favor. democrats now hold 51 senate seats to the republicans' 45 with races in montana and north dakota still undecided. >> and as i said before, the only thing steve schmidt really wanted to win this year, along with me, was control of the house. >> yeah. >> and we did it! we won! does anybody believe me? anybody? >> it's all right. >> anybody taking the bait? >> yeah. >> i didn't think so. essentially, we are left with the same political structure in d.c. that we have enjoyed so much over the past two years. with us now to talk about that and more -- >> yeah. we have mark halperin and steve schmidt. and joining us now, the host of msnbc's "hardball," chris matthews, everybody. we also have contributor to "newsweek" and the daily beast and co-founder of no labels,

mark mckinnon who was with us at the 92nd street "y" last night getting wasted. >> just getting hammered. >> it was embarrassing. >> chris, i have a lot to ask. >> congratulations. i love this room. i keep thinking how great this is to be here. >> it is. it's so exciting. the crowd's great, too. and as i was saying in the break, this is the america that my mother warned me about if barack obama got re-elected. socialism and republicans forced to sit up in the balcony. there are four republicans. and they're sitting up there. it's going to be okay, mom, i promise. >> this is what paul ryan promised two days ago, two days ago was the fall of the western world. >> yeah. >> the end of the judeo-christian tradition, of all that we care about. pretty frightening. >> i love after anything that passes that the other side

doesn't like, tonight, freedom breathed its final breath. and i actually believed it like the first couple months in the house. this is awful! and then the next day would come. you go, oh, wait, we still have freedom. >> we're good. >> we're going to be fine. so mom, and republicans -- >> it's going to be okay. >> -- in the words of the reverend al green, "everything's gonna be all right." we're good. >> it might be better. >> but not as well as the president. chris, i've got a couple of quick questions to ask you. lightning round. >> rapid fire. rapid fire. >> the president's speech last night -- >> what? >> the president's speech last night? >> yeah. >> what? >> did you not like it? >> what is wrong? >> i didn't go for it, no. >> why not? >> what? >> he talked about reaching out. >> why do i have to do this now? i'm absolutely stunned by what happened last night. i thought it was stunning. a six-round knockout out of nowhere. you weren't the only one who didn't get it. >> i'm stunned. >> i thought this was the most unpredictable year.

i don't want to say anything bad. i want to talk about the guy that you thought should win. can't i just answer the question a different way like people do? >> just say what you want to say. >> he gets to ask the question. you get to answer the answer. >> i don't want to say anything negative about the president. >> chris, hold on. let's start this over. we'll cut it in posts. hey, chris, what did you think about last night? >> oh, great, thank you, chris. i thought -- and mika, we're all and this guy -- we're all romantic about politics at one level. we want to see something really fine happen. and i get very verklempt when i talk about it this way. it's not funny. >> oh, my lord. okay. >> romney -- i mean, i thought romney's speech last night was a piece of wonder. i thought the way he came out alone and stood in one, as they say on broadway, right out there by himself, not with the wife, a shoulder to cry on, stood out

there with manliness and grace and did absolutely everything right. i called the president. i wished him well. this is out of the book. this is how you do it. it's biblical. and every single thing was classic perfect. and the way he wished the president -- and he did every single thing right. he said his campaign staff were the best in the business. he said that his pick for vp was perfect. he didn't lay it off on anybody but himself. and i got the feeling when he said "we left everything on the field," in other words, that man was deliberate last night. i think he had a sense, i couldn't have done more. i campaigned even on election day. my dad tried to do this. i tried to do this. i couldn't have done more. and i mean this really spiritual, i think he's very believing in his religion. i think he felt that if this is the way it's got to be, this is the way god wants it, you know, the thunderstorm, everything that happened. he promised very -- what's the right word? he's calm about it. because he knows very few of us know what it's like to do

everything to win. >> with grace. and that will help him transition. >> yeah. he did every single thing he knew he could do to win, and he -- how can you be any better person than that? >> mark mckinnon, though, i remember watching al gore after he conceded after the recount. and three minutes into that speech -- >> that was -- >> -- i said, if this al gore had run, we would have lost. and you just wonder how losing a bittersome but frees up others at the moment. >> i think it liberates candidates and to show a side of them that sometimes they haven't showed in the election, which is unfortunate. i think it would have been great if people had seen more of that mitt romney. i think that's who he really is. >> i really appreciate so much what chris has said this morning because i think it speaks to reaching out. but mark mckinnon, you and me as republicans, just tell the truth about the rest of the campaign before that speech. mitt romney ran a cynical, cold

campaign. he ran false, misleading commercials. and we said it on air in realtime, he lied about welfare reform. he lied about the auto bailout. these 30-second ads, he lied about medicare. he had a running mate who wanted to do practically the same thing. i know that sounds harsh, but it's the truth, and americans get it. and on top of that, stuart stevens decided, along with mitt romney, to run a campaign about nothing. they were going to run against the president. and i agree with chris. and i've been saying it all year. mitt romney is such a good man. >> and i think -- >> personally, he's somebody that we should all -- >> they're a great family. >> -- emulate. they're a great family. but his campaign was not great. >> well, you have to lay most of that off on him, though. >> he's the candidate, right. >> i think we saw the real mitt romney last night. i think that is reflectively who he really is. but i think he's a guy who also is very transactional. he ran in 2008. he saw what worked and what

didn't. he saw what he needed to do to win the 2012 primaries. as a result, that's where he ended up in the general election. >> so chris matthews, why do you look sad? >> i'm stunned. >> it happened so fast. >> i've been thinking about this election for years. and i've been thinking about, you know, the first election of an african-american president blew me away in this country. i just figured in our history, for this to happen is just stunning. >> i'm glad it was a decisive outcome. >> this time i think it showed that advertising on presidential elections is a waste of money. anybody that spends $1, the koch brothers wasted their money. karl rove, you can't tell an american who to vote for for president with a 30-second tv ad. that's disrespectful to begin with. >> i think we were stunned. >> don't you think? >> yeah, we were stunned last night as the results came in how quickly michigan came in, how quickly wisconsin came in, how quickly new hampshire came in and how decisive it was.

i was stunned as well. i mean, i said before that if you're looking at the numbers, the president's going to win. but you think there might be something else there. it never came. >> there was one legitimate romney campaign that we got a good lack at in the first debate. and i don't mean the fact that he came in overpowering and in command. it bothered me. but he said one simple thing that people were buying. i'm a businessman. i'm not a jack-of-all-trades. i hire people, create jobs. if he fought on that line, instead he went off on benghazi. you know what? we want jobs. that's what this country is about is self-reliance. >> obama's for jobs. >> if he'd have stayed on that one line. as you said, he didn't have the confidence in what he was doing. he didn't believe in it. he's going to go out tomorrow and start making business again, start doing the equity business again probably. that's what he does. if he'd have said you're not

always looking for a guy like me, but you are. >> i totally agree with you. >> mark halperin, we're obviously going to be looking at strategy. republicans are going to be talking about what mitt romney did wrong. let's talk about not only what the president did right but what david plouffe and the rest of that campaign did right. you know -- >> again. >> again. i mean, the targeting. >> in hard times. >> the targeting, the focused approach. i've always talked about what ken mehlman and karl rove did in 2004. boy, what happened last night was nothing short of remarkable because the campaign events, they weren't that exciting. you look at the faces in the crowd, people weren't as moved by the president. but you know what? emotion at the end didn't matter. the hard numbers did. >> the president said in his speech last night, i had the best campaign staff ever. and maybe some would take it hyperbolic. it may turn out to be true.

they did a bunch of stuff they teased at. michael scheerer has a piece coming out in time.com and "time" magazine, inside some of the targeting they did that they didn't show. they didn't want the republicans to know. i had one republican source who signed up for a lot of their stuff to see what they were doing. and their targeting of getting these voters out in the nine states that mattered, not wasting time in the other states, reaching out to their base. they may be -- we may decide the best campaign of all time. >> steve schmidt, do you agree? >> absolutely. i think that the job that david plouffe and david axelrod did is they go down in history in the books. they're the greatest campaign consultant duo that's ever lived. >> massena. >> you worked with the great tip o'neill right after the ronald reagan landslide. and ronald reagan figured out how to work around the democrats sometimes, but also tip and ronald reagan, you're writing a book about it. >> right. >> learned how to work together.

what lessons should john boehner and his staff draw from what happened last night? and what should the president learn? >> there's a line i'm working on. when tip met gorbachev before reagan met gorbachev, gorbachev said what are you? i'm the opposition leader. he was delivering a message from reagan. he said no, actually, i'm the leader of the opposition. so the great question from gorbachev is, "what's that?" and tip's answer i think's going to be, "it means we don't disagree about everything," which is a profound statement. which means there's things right off the bat they can agree on. little things, foreign policy agreements, things like that we can agree on, reforms we can agree on. just start working together like we did with the soviet union. get used to little things. the other thing is you've got to realize the main result of this election. okay, we can argue what the division is, but it's something like 60/40 democrat. so when you cut the deal, it should be a 60/40 pro-democratic

deal, but it's got to be a deal. and then when tip won the second election in '82 as you remember, they had a solution on social security, which is a 60/40 democratic deal. in other words, you respect each other's offers. you both won, you know? you know? mick mcconnell's still there. boehner's still there. and they got elected by the caucuses and by the people. you've got to respect them. and both of you respect the electorate. so you cut a deal. you don't mess around. you say okay, we're going to cut a deal. 60/40 your way this time, but you've got a deal. the trouble is if you have to deal with the tea party people, they're not the majority. you've got to work around them. that's all you have to do. if they're not going to cut a deal, you've got to work around them. >> mika, i love the story that richard reeves writes in his ronald reagan biography about tip o'neill and ronald reagan. and maybe the defining moment of that relationship, reeves writes that after the marines were killed in beirut, tip o'neill called together a meeting at hc-5, got all the democrats down together.

they thought he was going to give a political speech. instead tip o'neill said to the democrats gathered there, while the barracks were still smoldering, he said, you know, today we're not democrats. today we're americans. and if any of you speak out against the president of the united states, you're not going to have ronny reagan to have to deal with. you're going to have tip o'neill to deal with. and reeves -- richard reeves said that the democrats followed tip o'neill's leadership. and when the time came, they criticized ronald reagan. but they did it in time. these were two old irish politicians that knew how to work together, even though they disagreed as fundamentally as possible. >> what we need is more people on both sides of the aisle like that. and before we go to a break, mark mckinnon, you've been on the cutting edge of this. co-founder of no labels. this is the issue. >> there's a lot of encouraging news out there. we had a lot of people out there campaigning on the idea of problem solving rather than partisan politics. and we'll be announcing in

january at least 40 members of roughly divided half and half between republicans and democrat, 40 members of the house and a few members of the senate that have committed to be part of a problem-solving caucus and committed to working across the aisle, working with one another in an effort to get these problems moving forward. >> that's great. >> excellent. >> that's some good news. >> all right. thank you. still ahead, the new u.s. senator-elect from massachusetts, elizabeth warren joins us. also, the moderator of "meet the press," david gregory, chuck todd and "washington post" columnist, eugene robinson. and next from richmond, winner of last night's u.s. senate race, tim kaine. also look who's coming down the hall. former pennsylvania governor ed rendell joins us here on set for a special edition of "morning joe." [ male announcer ] wouldn't it be cool if you could combine

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♪ [ male announcer ] around view monitor with bird's-eye view. nice work. [ male announcer ] introducing the all-new nissan pathfinder. it's our most innovative pathfinder ever. nissan. innovation that excites. ♪ this is a time of great challenges for america, and i pray that the president will be successful in guiding our nation. at a time like this, we can't risk partisan bickering and political posturing. our leaders have to reach across the aisle to do the people's work. and we citizens also have to rise to the occasion.

>> 23 past the hour. welcome back to a special edition of studio 8h of "morning joe." still with us on set, mark halperin and mark mckinnon. joining us now, political analyst and former chairman of the republican national committee, michael steele. and former governor of pennsylvania and nbc news political analyst, ed rendell. >> you know, mika, i want to follow up on what chris said. chris matthews said. >> yeah. >> about mitt romney's speech last night. it really was gracious. >> beautiful. >> i love the fact that he talked about how he wanted to pray for the president's success. and you know, that's critical. we have people out there saying that they're cheering agast the president. there's such a hostile environment in washington. and i'd say the same thing if mitt romney had won last night, obviously, that it used to be that we were taught growing up in my household that you prayed for the president. you didn't root against him. i thought mitt romney's message last night was an important one.

>> we've known mitt and ann romney for mother five years now, and some of their kids as well. they're a great family. >> great people. >> no question, they fought hard to try and win. and there were some dynamics along the way that were insurmountable that had nothing to do with him. we could go all the way back to the primary process. what the other candidates were so flawed, it didn't give him the right dynamic to lift himself up. it's not easy. >> no. >> it's not exact. >> nobody -- nobody, unless mark mckinnon knows this, unless they've been through it, nobody can understand just how gut-wrenching a presidential election is. >> impossible. >> it's a human microwave. >> very, very tough for the romneys. >> and then you get the keys to hell. >> you get the keys to the gates of hell. >> exactly. so ed rendell, pennsylvania was supposed to be in play. we saw polls that had mitt romney within two, within three, even this past weekend in that "tribune" poll. >> tied. >> yeah, this past weekend. in the end, it was wasn't close. >> we got seduced again.

>> what i think is the modeling of the polls had the enthusiasm gap built in, and there was no enthusiasm gap in pennsylvania. barack obama carried philadelphia in '08 by 487,000 votes, a record, shattered everything. last night with 5% of the vote not counting philadelphia, he's up 460,000. >> now, is that also in bucks county? >> no, that's just the city itself. >> just the city itself. >> two things the president's campaign assured us were true were true. one was they had the mechanics to get out the vote in the battleground states. the other was that the undecideds would not break decisively towards mitt romney. >> we talk all the time about what these campaigns were telling us all along. everything the president's campaign staff was telling us was true, and an awful lot of what mitt romney's campaign staff was telling us was, in effect, wristling past the graveyard, hoping against hope that they would get a wave. >> the president's campaign was confident throughout, the most confident i've ever covered. they said the president had

small but durable results. when we look at the results, because of the two factors i said, their turnout operation and the undecideds going partially for the president. they overperformed in a lot of these battleground states. >> that's what happened this weekend, mark mckinnon. when they got the polls back, the romney people, excited on saturday. dejected on sunday despite the fact they had 25,000 to 30,000 people out in pennsylvania. >> huge crowds. >> they saw that the undecideds weren't breaking their way. >> the wind went out of the sails and they got their internals and it showed they were five down in ohio. that's i when i this they went to pennsylvania as a hail mary. i wanted to ask mark a question. mark, can you tease out for us a little bit what the big story will be in "game change 2"? >> yes, on the book to our next fall, sure. but thank you for asking. >> that's all you're going to get, by the way. it's embargoed. >> i'd like to ask mark and the

governor a question because i thought it was fascinating speaking of pennsylvania, the fact that there was some movement there, some opportunity. you're right, mark, pennsylvania has always been a nice little tease for republicans. but there was something there, i thought, that merits some further investigation. do you think, if they had approached -- the romney team had approached the idea of not necessarily pennsylvania, per se, but a number of other states to stretch out the obama team and their effort a little bit more than they had to sort of tap into and get them off how they were microtargeting those districts, that that would have made a difference in places like a florida or a virginia that they wound up losing instead of winning? >> this is the first presidential campaign any of us have seen where resources weren't an issue for either side. and i think if governor romney had gone earlier into a state like pennsylvania, the president's team would have been as competent and efficient in

analyzing how do we get to 50% plus one in pennsylvania with the kind of targeting. for instance, in virginia, they targeted women voters effectively. talking about women's reproductive freedom and other issues. i think they would have done the same in the philadelphia subu suburbs. >> they could have also done the same thing in minnesota. it may have been a stretch, but they allowed the president's team to set up the map. it's stunning. >> after romney's great performance in the first debate, if i were the romney campaign, i'd go into pennsylvania. they spent $11 million in the last seven days. if they could have spent $30 million, $35 million in the last four weeks, they could have made it very tough for us. remember, obama carried by 11. probably when the final vote's in, we're going to be under 5. if they had played, mark, who knows? >> you know, six months ago, mika, i was approached by a republican in the state of virginia who was not supporting tim kaine. and he came up to me, and he said, watch tim kaine in

virginia. they're going to say this is close. but this guy came to my office. he sat down with me. and he said, i know you're not going to vote for me. i know you didn't support me when i was governor. i know you disagree with me, but let's talk about how we can work together when i win. and he said, it's a first time i saw anybody do it. i talked to my other republican friends. and this is what tim kaine was doing across the state of virginia. that is how you win elections. and a lot of times, and the governor will tell you this and mark will tell you this, it's about personality as much as politics. and tim kaine did it right. >> look at tim kaine this morning. >> right now from west virginia, winner of last night's virginia senate race, democratic senator-elect, tim kaine! >> congratulations! >> hey, thanks, guys. it's great to be with you. >> so -- >> he looks a little tired. >> so senator, talk about that. talk about what you did because i heard it from several republicans that you didn't just microtarget the people that you

thought would vote for you. you actually went out and spoke with people that you knew would vote against you. but let them know that you were going to represent all of virginia. how did that pay off for you last night? >> well, joe, it felt very, very good. you know, we felt like we had a plan, and it was a positive plan. and we stuck to it. you know, some of you know virginia is a state where we're kind of naturally independent. we don't register by party, so even though people might have a preference, we really try to reach out across the spectrum. and i also have a particular reason to -- my father-in-law was the first republican governor of virginia in the 20th century. and he's a proud 89-year-old republican. so while i'm a proud democrat, i've always felt like the key to success as a mayor and as a governor is try to get everybody at the table. even if people aren't going to be with you, it's important that they know you're going to represent them well if you get the office, and that's what we tried to convey. >> let's talk a little bit about the power of money in not only presidential politics but in these races as well.

your race, your senate race, drew more outside money than any other senate race out there. and according to "politico," outside groups spent $30 million to defeat you. what would you like to see change in the process, which is, wouldn't you aagree, a little corroded and toxic when it comes to money? >> yeah, it definitely needs to be changed. i think i was the second most punched-up target in the country after president obama with respect to secret super pac money. they started running ads against me in november of 2011, and we didn't put our first ad on the air of august 23rd, 2012. what we did is we banked that virginians would kind of reject negative ads. that it might have a little effect, but at the end of the day, if you're going to be a senator, they want to hear why you're going to do it and what you hope to do. and when we went up the last 12 weeks strong, positive in english and spanish the race started to come our way.

we need to have at a minimum a no-secret-money rule. you shouldn't be able to give to some third-party organization and then evade the policies we put in place after watergate. that's the first thing i'm signing on for. and i think there's a lot of other reforms we've got to put in place. >> governor, senator-elect, mark halperin here. congratulati congratulations. i want to move to governance. the big issue for everybody is now going to be the fiscal cliff. obviously, you can't go into the full details, but what would you like to see in a grand bargain? what are the big elements required to get the kind of deal that everybody's going to be asked to weigh in on? >> well, mark, let me take it in two steps. first let's avoid the sequester cuts and the expiration of all the bush tax cuts. i've had a plan on the table for about five months that just uses three simple elements that i think are all compromises. let the bush tax cuts expire over $500,000. that's a compromise between the democratic and republican position, and it produces about $500 billion over ten years. fix medicare so we can negotiate for prescription drug pricing.

and take tax subsidies away from the big five oil companies who are incredibly profitable. if you do those three things, and you can see all those as compromises, then you take the trillion dollars of potential cuts that could hurt defense and hurt the virginia economy, and you shrink it down to about $230 billion of targeted savings that you have to find over the next ten years. if we can do that deal, that will create confidence and can springboard us into the bigger discussion, and i think the bigger discussion has to be one where kind of along the lines suggested by so many, we've got to have $2 or $3 of targeted cuts for every $1 of revenue, but we can't fix the balance sheet unless we fix both sides of the balance sheet. so both parties are going to have to give. >> senator-elect tim kaine, congratulations. thank you very much. >> thanks for being with us, senator-elect. >> hey, joe, thank you. looking forward to seeing that mustache. >> all right. very good. yeah. boy. >> that's just awful. >> we've got to wait. we've got to wait till the florida -- let the people speak.

>> axelrod will be here thursday. >> we'll talk about it. >> florida will have spoken. >> let's talk really quickly, and i think this is a great development. whether you listen to the president's speech last night, mitt romney's speech last night, what senator-elect tim kaine just said, a lot of people showing grace in victory. grace in defeat. >> good feeling. feels pretty good. >> this feels like a different moment to me than i've felt -- am i alone here? i haven't felt this sense of sort of a positive feeling from both sides in a long time. >> joe, you're right, but the feeling can dissipate. the president's got to take the feeling and lead. he's got to lead and he's got to lead quickly in my judgment. >> that's a good point. he's got to grab it. >> the sooner the better. >> so willie geist is somewhere here. and he's got the tease. oh, there he is. willie, take it away. >> i've got an all-star crew here. one thing donny deutsch did want me to point out, one small

critique, we have not yet mentioned that weed is now recreationally legal in colorado and washington. that was a donny. that was a donny. he's our public editor this morning. we'll be right back with donny, the great tom brokaw, david gregory, also senator-elect elizabeth cwarren and bill karis on that nor'easter that's sweeping this way. all that and more when we come right back. good morning, everyone. we are watching this nor'easter that's going to be affecting the areas that were just slammed by sandy. and it's going to be ugly this afternoon. already behind me in new york city, winds gusting to 30 to 35 miles per hour. there's a lot of people in this region of the country that are afraid of the winds after sandy. and they're going to howl later today. already getting gusts, as i mentioned, in the 30s. later today we're going to see gusts to 50 to 70 miles per hour. we're going to have more trees coming down. additional power outages. and a lot of people just got the power back on. and then we're going to see snow with this storm. in areas like philadelphia,

under a winter storm warning. your travel this afternoon and this evening is going to be treacherous. all of new jersey, eastern pennsylvania into the greater new york city area up into connecticut, possibilities of up to three to five inches of heavy, wet snow from the catskills, the poconos, right down the delaware river all the way into the philadelphia region. and that may be enough with the gusty winds to take down some power lines, too. we've got a travel nightmare out there in the northeast this afternoon. thousands of flights are going to be canceled. the airports will probably be closed in new york city and southern new england as we go throughout this evening. again, this nor'easter is moving in as we speak. it will be with us for about 24 hours throughout areas of new england. so for the people that just got slammed by sandy, you're going to get large waves, more storm surge, and some of those houses that are kind of hanging on, they may get washed out into the ocean this time, unfortunately, there's nothing to protect them. no dunes left. well, much more on last night's historic election coming to you live from studio 8h. more "morning joe" right around

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of 26 miles per gallon, highway, and best-in-class passenger roominess? yeah, that would be cool. introducing the all-new nissan pathfinder. it's our most innovative pathfinder ever. nissan. innovation that excites. ♪ ♪ it's more than a feeling this victory belongs to you. you did this. you did this. for every family that has been chipped and squeezed and hammered, we're going to fight for a level playing field, and we're going to put people back to work. i will always carry your stories with me in my heart. i won't just be your senator.

i will be your champion. i promise. >> you know what the most difficult part of this is? i now have to break the news to my truck that i'll be taking it home. you all sent me to washington to be my own man, and i'll be returning my own man. and for that i am very, very proud. so thank you for that opportunity. there are no obstacles you can't overcome. and dweetd -- and defeat is only temporary. >> look at that. >> that's pretty good. 42 past the hour. >> some more graciousness. >> that was really great. >> all around. >> two great candidates in that race. welcome back to "morning joe." harold ford jr. and mike barnicle back at the table. joining us now, the chairman of -- >> the graciousness ends. >> yeah, it ends right here. >> just the look on his face. i know something absolutely ridiculous and off color is going to come out of his mouth. >> or else he's going to tear

off that shirt and he's going to have the baby gap black t-shirt. >> you vote! i come here to talk serious. >> here's the deal. elizabeth warren is going to be on this segment. could you please be quiet? >> you watched all morning. has she chastised any guest? none. reverence, respect, abuse. >> deserved. >> boy, you didn't see her interviewing rudy yesterday, did you? so let's talk about the republican brand. you're all about branding. the republican primary process, we talked about it this past weekend on "meet the press," it really hurt the republican brand. the convention did not go well. and you look at this party right now, its brand is as bad as it's been in years. >> i was talking to steve schmidt backstage. the brand is over as we know it, if it ever wants to succeed. all you have to do is look at the demographics of where the country is going. it's going to get worse for

them. people want progressiveness. people want compassion. basically -- and even, you know, bill o'reilly who i never like to quote basically said the white establishment is now the minority. they have to self-correct. they can't just say we're not your father's oldsmobile anymore. they have to be a new invention. they will never win again if their tenor, if their gestalt, does not change. their relevancy has moved away from them. literally, they need brand reinvention. the republican party as we know it, if they will ever win another election, has to be completely reinvented at this point. >> and you talked about steve shsubms schmi schmidt, this is about demographics. george h.w. bush in 1988, an election we all remember very well, got 62% of the white vote. he got over 400 electoral votes. last night, mitt romney got 62% of the white vote. he got half the electoral votes.

>> chuck todd said an interesting thing backstage also. georgia, texas, arizona moving away. you know, what this country is going to look like in the year 2050, this is a new country. and basically, they're being held captive by the tea party. they're being held captive because you've got to give a nod to those extreme social issues. you can't get elected that way anymore. it's that simple. >> and joe, as you said, it's got to be beyond symbolic. you can't just nominate marco rubio next time and say see, we've changed. it actually has to come from somewhere deeper. >> that's a fantastic point. i said that also. it can't just be look at me, i'm hispanic or african-american, it's got to be here. >> it's got to be what elizabeth warren did, actually. >> is that your segue in. >> yes, it is. >> you look at marco rubio in florida, ted cruz in texas, republicans are electing good conservative candidates. but if you have a primary process that forces everybody to go far, far right and being seen as being hostile to hispanics,

it's going to cost you. >> all right. joining us now from boston, winner of the massachusetts u.s. senate race, senator-elect elizabeth warren. congratulations! >> you know -- >> i'm sorry. i'm so happy for you. >> mika is so giddy, senator-elect. >> i really am. >> i don't know what i'm going to do with her. you can now tell america that it was our kiss at fenway that put you over the top last night. >> that was it. >> what an incredible victory. talk about what's happened to you over the past four years. who would have believed that a boomer sooner would make it to the u.s. senate in massachusetts! >> you know, this has just been amazing. every single part of this. and the most amazing part has been the last year about running for office. you know, massachusetts is a very special place. this one was grass roots all the

way. these were people who showed up in living rooms and kitchens and school auditoriums who held signs, who called neighbors, who really made this happen. and they saw this race as a race about what kind of a people we are, what kind of country we're going to build. and they wanted to be part of it. and they made it happen yesterday. i've got to tell you, this is democracy. >> yeah. no, we watched you throughout the race. we've been so impressed with your campaign. even joe was. and your campaign style was genuine and based on knowledge and gut, knowledge in terms of what you truly believe this country needs to do. but let me ask you now moving forward, because you created the consumer financial protection bureau, but then it got of got churned out of the system. you know how hard washington can be. you lived it. now you've gone through how brutal a campaign can be. what do you think you'll be able to do in washington given the

fact that when you get there, it's going to look a lot like the washington we had last week? >> you know, but i come there for the same reasons i went before. and that is to work for people who need, someone to speak out for them. i come there not just to be a senator. come on, that's not what this is about. this is really about coming there for all the people who say, look, this country has got to work for us. working people. for the carpenters, for the teachers, for all the people who said, we're out there. we work hard. we play by the rules. we just want a chance. we just want a chance to build a little economic security. we're willing to pull tighter on our belts if we feel like we're building a future for our kids. just help us do that. for me, this isn't about parties. i'll work with anyone. and i really do mean that. democrat, republican,

independent, libertarian, contrarian, vegetarian, i don't care. it's about -- >> that's a big tent, senator. >> it is a big tent. you bet. because what it's really got to be about is it's about what's happening to our working families, what's happening to america's middle class. if we don't make some changes and put some solid ground under their feet, then america as we know it is going to fundament fundamentally change. we just can't let that happen. and the people of massachusetts last night, i've got to tell you, there are too many folks who stood there in the rain holding a sign, too many folks who knocked on doors to say, we're better than that. we can build a country together that works for our families again. i believe that. >> mike barnicle. >> senator-elect warren -- >> oh, say that again, barnicle. >> isn't that amazing? i love it. >> senator-elect warren. it's been many months since i

encountered you in washington when you were just leaving the consumer bureau. and we talked about you running for the united states senate. >> i think you talked about it. yeah. mm-hmm. >> but you know, i think you'd be the first to admit, you know harvard law school you led a rather sheltered life in a sense within academia. what have you learned about yourself during the course of one of the greatest processes a person can go through, a campaign -- >> and grueling. >> going through places like fit fitchburg, massachusetts, and gardner, massachusetts, far from cambridge, the life you've led the past ten years. what have you learned about yourself that you think will be helpful for you in the senate? >> you know, i think it's about the heart and about the connection. i always know who i am. i'm the daughter of somebody who sold fencing and ended up as a

maintenance man. my mom worked the phones at sears. i knew every single day at harvard exactly who i was. i was blessed to be there but i didn't kid myself. i wasn't born there. when i was in fitchberg and pittsfield, i was growing up in an america that was still investing in its kids, an america creating more and more opportunities and too many people today live in a world in which the opportunities just keep shrinking. there just aren't enough doors that open. and so it was -- it's hard to heart and it's understanding. we all want that same chance. i got the chance. i want to make sure others get it, too, and that's what this race was about. >> all right. thank you so much for being with us, senator-elect elizabeth warren. we greatly appreciate it. >> thank you. >> thank you. congratulations. >> and carol ford, i want to say

it again -- >> she's great. >> i know she's great. >> i know but she's really good. we're so lucky to have her. >> yes, i know you're so lucky to have her. >> it's true. aren't we lucky to have her? thank god. >> what's the opposite of a bromance? >> i told you not to speak. >> again, look, we're talking, mika, like this era of good feeling at least for the past 24 hours doesn't look like this usually the morning after an election, a hard fought election. but look at not only what the winner said last night in massachusetts but look at the joy -- the joy, seeming joy, in scott brown -- >> scott brown is a really great guy. >> a great guy. we saw it with mitt romney last night, defeat. harold, we saw it with scott brown last night in defeat. a lot of graciousness this morning and, i'll tell you what, if we're going to do what we

have to do as a country moving forward over the next six months, we need this sort of cooperation. >> that's probably the most appealing feature this morning if you are an independent voter, an independent minded democrat or republican in the country, all of these candidates, winners and losers. i was struck by elizabeth warren's answer to barnicle's question about what she had learned and will take to the senate. tim kaine talking about compromise which he did during the campaign, how you begin to broker an agreement between democrats and republicans around the fiscal cliff and it -- >> when he said his numbers started to move is when he started running positive campaign ads in english and in spanish the numbers started breaking his way. >> you had a segment or two before, i hope he's right. i'm sick of seeing the negative advertising. i was sick of saying that all the money pour ed in, not only n the campaign but these outside groups, perhaps will usher in a new way in which campaigns will

be conducted. in fact, it will have more debates. in fact, will have -- if indeed tim is right, that the positive ads helped tim to reach out to independent republicans and republicans elect to win that seat. that's what the country wants as much as we might have gone back and forth. people are interested in these answers. >> there was a horrible moment, obvio obviously, with sandy but something magical came out of it. i think when christie and obama came together that was a seminal moment and set a road map for how politicians are supposed to behave. how they're supposed to behave. the day after election you are seeing the beginning of it. positive will be the new blackmail. the vitriol will no longer be in vogue -- i mean en vogue black. it's an expression. >> i told him not to speak, right? >> i'm making a very salient point here. this is the beginning of a new era. >> you may be making a salient

point, but you're making it very badly. why don't you just go backstage and collect some of those quotes you were just talking about. >> et tu brutus? >> donny, great point, though. people do want cooperation. americans are tired of negative campaigning. they really are. and those 30-second ads run by mitt romney didn't move a single vote. a good performance in the first debate did. that's all he had. >> can i be the brief resident cynic? >> and i'm going to join you. >> we closed the polls 12 hours ago. do we have any reason to believe that radio talk show hosts, people online are going to suddenly become more civil? >> no but people tune that off. that's the difference. >> we've said that before. >> it's a moment in time. there is a certain shift that's happening and it started with this election. get the smug grin off your face, you cynical jerk you.

>> to 0 one of the points you made about chris christie, that wasn't -- it's not like mitch mcconnell and john boehner and president obama were coming together and -- it was the governor and it was a hurricane. 0 so while it was symbolically great, it was what they were supposed to do. i just want to close the conversation by asking you a question because i believe republicans will pummel chris christie, will punish him for it. was there an opportunity for the romney campaign and for 0 republicans to embrace what chris christie was doing or do they have to behave as they always do and kill their young? >> as they always do. i think both parties have been guilty of that in the past. chris christie, though, did, and this is critical for somebody who comes from a hurricane state that had three, i think four hurricanes hit my district. even though bill clinton was my fiercest opponent politically, when we had a hurricane hit, you wanted the president there.

you wanted to be able to take him around and show him how your people were hurting. i will tell you -- i will tell you -- and chris christie teared up a couple days ago and some people have been mocking him. i will tell you it's such an emoti emotional experience when you go to your friends and your neighbors homes that were there two days earlier and i can tell you one of the saddest moments after hurricane ivan hit our district in 2004 was when our good friends jan and rob mackey were crawling -- jan was crawling on the ground. her house was completely destroyed and she was crawling on the ground crying trying to find pictures of their babies so she could have those pictures to take with the new house they bought. you lose everything. and when you represent these people who have lost everything -- >> and you can bring them the president -- >> you want to do whatever you can to bring people comfort and

i will tell you it doesn't matter whether it's bill clinton or george w. bush or whether it's barack obama. when air force one touches down in your district, you go and you embrace that president and ask him for help. chris christie did all he could do, and if you don't believe me, ask jeb bush who did it time and again as governor of florida. >> there you go. and it's the republicans, then they haven't learned anything from this election. still ahead on this special edition of "morning joe" eugene robinson. up next nbc's tom brokaw, moderator of "meet the press" david gregory and chuck todd. [ male announcer ] wouldn't it be cool if you could combine

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[ male announcer ] introducing the all-new nissan pathfinder. it's our most innovative pathfinder ever. nissan. innovation that excites. ♪ ♪ it's a beautiful day ♪ it's a beautiful day don't let it get away ♪ america, i believe we can build on the progress we've made and continue to fight for new jobs and new opportunity and new security for the middle class. i believe we can keep the promise of our founder. the idea if you're willing to work hard it doesn't matter who you are or where you come from or what you look like or where

you love. it doesn't matter whether you're black or white or hispanic or asian or native american or young or old or rich or poor, able, disabled, gay or straight, you can make it here in america if you're willing to try. >> it is the top of the hour. good morning, everyone. and welcome back to the special edition of "morning joe." it's wednesday, november 7, the morning after the election. we're live from historic studio 8h in rockefeller center in front of a live studio awudienc. they have been here since 4:00 in the morning. >> and, by the way, we have a special announcement -- >> what's that? >> hook at the action up there. >> all right. >> miami. >> i have a public service announcement for the three republicans that are here that were forced to sit in the balance k

balcony. democrats vacated a seat down on the floor if you want to sneak down, come on down and you can get it. >> if you can believe some of these people were at the 92nd street "y" with us last night. >> and you drinking. >> i was not drinking. i think you were drinking. i think everyone was, actually. >> i need add drink. it was a big night. we've talked about it for the past couple of hours, but, david gregory, we were just talking about a column i wrote a week ago where you brought up the ir irony that mitt romney, mr. data, was having to rely on human emotion to sweep him over and barack obama, who was elected on emotion four years ago was relying on data. and, in had this case, data, hard numbers, hard context, wasn't even close. >> covering politics, you were in politics, you understand there's a lot of spin on both sides. the obama team was as confident as any team i've ever covered. they never wavered. they said even a couple days ago the race has not moved. they believed they knew what the

electorate looked like. they were exactly right. all the talk on the republican side, not just in the romney campaign but other republicans saying there is something going on out there, they were ted wrong. >> there was something going on out there. it's just the demographic time bomb went off. >> it went off last night and, chuck, you look at races. i look at the 1980 race where you had the big emotion. my race in 1994 was tied 49%/49% and i won. those days are gone as well with all the early voting, with so few swing voters it's baked in the cake by the last weekend. >> it is. but what was amazing to go back to david's point -- >> and, by the way, congratulations on your polls. you were dead wrong. >> marist was. let's congratulate them and our state polls. the marist folks lee miringoff,

you had to wear kevlar vest this is year if you were a pollster. everyone came after you. we spend a lot of money doing these things. not every news organization does. they kept saying, hey, look, this is the electorate we're finding and republicans kept saying, no, no, no, it's not this. >> they were right. maybe conspiracy theorists were wrong again. >> again. and so we were going to have this whole hand wringing, can we not do good polling anymore? the problem is there are a lot of cheap pollsters out there that are cheapening the entire process putting too many out there, the old homer simpson and the robo calling machine that i tell people. there's a great sense where he buys one and suddenly he's harassing the town. that's like half the pollsters out there are doing the same thing. they're not real pollsters. >> so tom brokaw, a historic night, barack obama joins wad row wilson, fdr, and bill clinton in a very select club of democratic presidents,

re-elected the past century. >> and no one knows it better than he does this morning, he has rudy giuliani was mocking him earlier, he didn't want a second term. he wants a second chance. i think he did want a second chance as well as a second term. now he has an opportunity to go beyond being the historic figure of the african-american president, the first one, and being re-elected. and then what is the legacy? what do i leave behind that endures, that is good for the country? and that's a monumental task when you think about it. he has a lot of goodhad will going in and at the same time he's playing against a republican party now that's going to be involved in a feud. it started already about how do we recap this party so we can be competitive on a national basis again. i think the republicans were trapped by a lot including the hubries that came out of 2010. they said, that's it. we have exactly what we want and

we can play the hard game of excluding a lot of the constituencies that they failed to recognize -- women, latinos, african americans, and, david plouffe will go down as the best campaign strategist i have ever seen using all the tools of modern technology. i said last night theirs was a post modern campaign and the romney campaign was a retro campaign. >> an example by this, the easiest one since we're a couple footballs -- joe, we are a couple of football goons and you will appreciate this which has to do with how the obama campaign -- the big ten network. nobody watches it except on saturdays. and it's literally this is the white male audience. the obama campaign was advertising on the big ten network for five weeks before the romney campaign ever did. these are the little things. they knew -- they had this one system that they subscribe to that allowed them to monitor the way nielsen ratings do.

they monitor people that voluntarily wanted to do this, their viewing habits. what times of day did they sit on their couch and watch television so they knew what times to run their tv ads. it wasn't just what stations to buy. >> this is what karl rove did. >> this is taking it to -- that looks like stone age stuff in comparison to what they're doing. >> what's ironic about that point, i remember rove and a lot of republicans mocking the money obama was spending in march and april of this year and even before to lay down the groundwork for the very thing that would come back and trip them up. if you made those investments because, keep in mind, we didn't need a nominee in the republican party to begin to make those kinds of investments in the ground game and the strategy.

we'd already set a lot of that in motion in 2009 and 2010. that's how a chris christie wins in new jersey by using technology and just hard work, grassroots organization to get that vote. >> so president obama is in the even more select group, having won re-election with the unemployment rate as it is at 7.9%. it's only happened a few times. now, joe, there's a double strategy for the republicans, how not to look obstructionist but also how to regroup so they can win again. that's a challenge. >> they have to. they have to figure out how to redefine themselves. so much of it goes to demographics. we've said it before. george h.w. bush again in 1988 got over 400 electoral votes. he won in a massive landslide and got the same percentage of white voters as mitt romney had last night when he got half the electoral votes and will always be remembered as the guy who got blown out and i think, david, chuck had said demographic time

bomb went off. you guys obviously had fantastic coverage on nbc news last night. we were at the 92nd street "y." i was with my people. i like being with my people. >> i thought you were cute. >> my people last night, the thing that shocked me, and you talked about it early on, this was not alabama versus lsu. this is alabama versus ball state. i mean, wisconsin went early, michigan went early, pennsylvania went early. as a republican i cannot believe we lost virginia again. >> right. chuck a minute ago said, you know, they were right. there was a lot of opposition to obama. look at what romney did in terms of percentage of the white vote. the country has changed here dramatically and axelrod, david axelrod on this program yesterday was talking about what the early vote was telling them. they could see the patterns in the early vote breaking for them. you look at cincinnati, hamilton county. they banked a lot of their early

vote there, the obama team. >> we all were trying to figure out whether they were being straight because you're always spun by campaigns -- >> they were being tricked. >> i'm going to make this right now. i will never again before an election doubt what obama campaign people tell me. never again. they were straight. they always were. they were always straight. >> you know from being around the bush guys as well, president bush understood the power and his political team the power of the latino vote in the kcountry. that's why he got 44% in 2004. it's why they pursued comprehensive immigration reform which failed and then the party sort of left him and chased a shrinking direction or a shrinking -- i can't find the words. a shrinking pool in a party. >> so you talk about george w. bush getting 44% of the electoral vote, tom brokaw.

if mitt romney had gotten, what, 35%. >> mccain's percentage. he would be president elect. >> he would be president right now. >> president bush 43 came out of texas so they had a clearer understanding and a different kind of relationship than governor romney did with them. i think that a lot of damage was done in the republican primaries, quite honestly. that went on cable television night after night after night and those debates and every one of the debates got meaner and got smaller in terms of who they were trying to rechl and who they were trying to motivate and you saw what governor romney went through at that time especially when governor perry got in. >> remember, governor romney chose to do this. this was his decision. there are some things where the party -- it's the party's fault not romney's fault but in this case he said, no, no, no, i'm going to make my conservative stand on immigration. >> and he could have won the primary without going there,

without trying to go to the right of rick perry. it's stunning what you said. if he had gotten the same percentage as john mccain of hispanic votes, he would be president elect. >> he would have carried florida. >> my mustache wants you to know he may carry florida. acti axelrod, not yet. >> eight of the nine battleground states that looks like the president is going to carry including florida, mitt romney improved on mccain. but what was amazinging are the places that barack obama expanded. they were very careful. so florida is the example. osceola and orange county just giant expansions of hispanic votes, mostly noncuban, puerto rican vote. osceola county is a great example. bush carried osceola county two elections ago. this time barack obama won it by 25 points. >> we were hearing early on, tom, more hispanic voters were going out in places like virginia this year than four years ago. >> the fact is it's a spreading

population. i spend time in the great plains. iowa has a hispanic population, working in the food processing plants and in marshall town, iowa, you can find a bodega and a spanish language grocery store of some kind. i just got back from south dakota. a fair amount of hispanic population in that state, again, working in the factories, working at the low-paying jobs. but in the communities where they are, they are highly regarded for their family values and they pay their bills on time and it's the american immigrant story. >> family values, work ethic, and faith. >> catholics. they're here on sunday morning. let's go forward from here. >> all right. >> i think that's a real test in the country now. we wake up in the morning. we know who is going to be the president. we know the republican party is going through an identity crisis at this point so where does the country end up? the big message last night was we want you all to get together and find solutions to these

problems that so trouble us because we're in a new landscape here in this country economically and culturally and politically and we need help to get out of it and everybody is going to have to get onboard. >> i think both sides are worried about the same things when you talk to people on both sides of the aisle, worried about similar things now including the deficit and spending. >> political institutions hear that and respond to it. >> they're going to have to. >> will we see that bridge being built between one end of pennsylvania avenue and the other between the senate and the house so that you can begin to have those conversations. i said for a while i think the president elect the day after the inauguration should just call the speaker of the house and the senate majority leader down to the white house, no cameras, no frills, sit down and go, all right, gentlemen, this is how we're going to do this and begin to assert that kind of executive leadership to help define the path because i think, quite honestly, that's what's been missing up to this point.

>> and others have fallen back and said, well, if he's not doing anything, i don't have to do anything. >> this is a real test not only for john boehner but for eric cantor. eric has a lot of decisions to make. is he going to be trying to outflank john boehner on the right? john boehner is trying to do a deal? eric now lives in a state that has gone democratic two times in a row. >> i don't want to sound pessimistic because i want to agree with tom but what about the opposite of what he is saying is true, what if there's a certain entrenchment, more politics and that view what's prevailed. the tea party sentiment is not going away, it speaks to the choice eric cantor represents and that he has to make and boehner has to negotiate as speaker of the house. that insurgency could continue. ted ted cruise is now senator-elect with tea party support. we have something of a status quo election. the this is where leadership

matters. what did the president say last night? i'm going to work with both sides in a meaningful way. i want romney -- i want to meet with romney and see how we can work together. that's the tone. >> that is the tone and i will say you look at the candidates who have won and lost last night, the fact a lot of house republicans, john boehner being speaker again, i don't know that it's about ideology so much as idiocy. i love this quote. we're debating about whether the republican party should be the conservative party or the moderate party. why don't we just all agree that we stop being the stupid party. look at the fact we did in indiana with mourdock, with akin. we left two seats on the table. two in 2010. linda mcmahon blowing two cha e chances to win. we have left, as steve schmidt, six, seven senate seats on the table. this is not about ideology.

this is about idiocy. we have got to figure out a way to vet our candidates better. >> this is -- having been around this for a while. in '72 the democrats went through the same kind of process and again in '80 when ronald reagan won. and in '80 everyone talks about the reagan win but in the senate the alliance of the democratic party -- >> it was a slaughter. >> nelson, george mcgovern, frank church. they all lost their seats at that time and the party had to reconstitute itself and they did so with bill clinton who moved the party to the middle and began to reach out across different lines and when he came up against somebody who had been a really popular president just nine months earlier, george bush 41, who had enormous success, they knew how to zero in on the economy and spread the field for the democratic party. >> they need someone and it's not necessarily victory for democrats to have candidates like the ones who just mentioned it. it's not good for the can

country. it's ridiculous. national urban league president and ceo and the latest on that nor'easter threatening the east coast. bill? it's beginning to move in. this is going to be a serious storm for all those people that just got nailed by sandy and i'm a little more concerned now with the amounts of snow inland. it looks like the colder air is going to hold. so as far as our nor'easter goes, you can see it on the screen, all the green is the heavy rain. we're dealing with the heaviest of rain and possibly the thunderstorm. that's all going to be swinging inland as we go throughout the day today. the winds are already really gusting very strong through coastal regions, he is peespeci on long island and through areas around cape cod. that's where we're seeing gusts to 50 miles per hour. it looks like down along the shoreline we are going to see a storm surge of three to five feet with 8 to 12 foot waves on

top of that. the damaged areas you've seen, they're going to have waves lapping into those houses and through the roller coasters on the coast. it's a horrible scene there for the jersey shore. anyone traveling from philadelphia through new jersey, southern new england, you do not want to be on the roads during the evening rush hour. that's when it will be snowing the hardest. as many as 5 to 6 inches in philadelphia. outside of new york city 4 inches of snow and these are areas that just got power back. now we're going to have winds and heavy snow on top of that. what a nightmare for all these people living in this region of the country not to mention all the airlines will easily have thousands of canceled flights the rest of today and tomorrow morning throughout this region. we'll continue to track that storm for you here along with our analysis of last night's historical election. you're watching "morning joe" brewed by starbucks. we're going to try to stump some political junkies with questions from bing elections. do you know where your polling place is? maybe somewhere around my house. mine's just, right over that way. well you can find out exactly

where it is using bing elections. it's a good day for politics. which way do you lean politically? conservative. republican. well, using the bing news selector you can find news from whichever way you lean. (together) social on this side, financial. which party is currently predicted to win a majority in the senate? the republicans? would you make a bet on that? no. are you chicken?

i believe in the people of ameri america. i believe in the principles upon which this nation was founded. the only sure thing to greatness. like so many of you, paul and i have left everything on the field. we have given our all to this campaign. i wish i had been able to fu fulfill your wish to lead the country in another direction. ann and i join with you to earnestly pray for him and this great nation. thank you and god bless america. you guys are the best. thank you so much. 25 past the hour. back with us here on this special edition of "morning joe"

chuck todd, tom brokaw and donny deutsch. and eugene robinson as well. >> underlining, i love him saying republicans and his supporters should earnestly pray for the president of the united states. the president needs those prayers. >> that's classy. >> we're going into tough times. let's talk about last night first. it was -- it just wasn't close. >> it was comprehensive. it was coast to coast. >> were you surprised by how comprehensive as well it was? >> i was. i was. and relieved. the electoral vote, it wasn't regional it was just a butt whipping. >> kids at home getting ready for school, that is a political science term, butt whip. it happened in the senate as well.

>> yeah, yeah. it surprised me they did so poorly. obviously going to pick up senate seats because there were so many democratic seats at risk and so few republican seats at risk and it just seemed like a no-brainer. >> we have tim kaine winning comfortably in virginia. elizabeth warren winning comfortably in massachusetts. i mean you look at what's happening across the country. >> the democratic women, these senators, looks like they will hold on in north dakota. it's an interesting new crop, some future stars or stars in the making actually look at elizabeth warren is going to be a national figure.

i'm guessing she is popular in this room. tammy baldwin. by the way, making history, first openly gay woman to be elected to the united states senate. >> you also had two ballot measures in support of gay marriage. in maryland and maine they both passed. >> remember ohio in 2004. and then all the pot smoking. >> you can tell gregory is from california. >> so brian's interviewing the governor of colorado, going you know, you guys, what was he saying exactly, david? >> weed is like significacigare. >> and the governor says, hey wait a minute, they do it in

cambridge, too, you know. >> there are 19 female senators. for the first time -- >> this is not like the first openly gay woman, this is packer fans. >> it's interesting that this network has -- it is a microcosm demographically where this country is going and i'm going to say it again unless the republicans -- it's not just soul-searching, re-invent themselves, it's not going to 0 work for them. >> this isn't that radical of a revelation. i've been saying it for a very long time. in many ways the country is becoming more libertarian. stay out of my pocketbook, stay

out of my bedroom. >> there are possibilities in the republican party. the country has changed. it's going to be a majority/minority country at some point. it's not now. i can't win without minority votes anymore. you have to pay attention to women's issues. the same sex issue has the opposite effect now than it used to. if republicans absorb this and learn these lessons and stop, you know, frankly -- this is not a term of art, nominating whackos for senate, then they're going to do fine and that will be good for the country. >> how do you cancel the republican primary? >> you are getting republican leaders talking to outside groups say iing let's not go do

this path. donna used progressive. there are a lot of ron paul supporters. there are a lot of libertarians. a lot of people support small government. this is shocking. there are fiscally conservative gay men and lesbian women who are waiting for an excuse to vote republican. >> this is not about moderation or conservatives giving up what they are. it's about redefining conservatism around what you believe which is fiscal conservatism or less emphasis on social issues, finding a way with latinos they're a natural con constituency for republican party as jeb bush believes. it's redefining that conservatism that fits with where the country is. >> i hate to say nice things about you because i don't really like you.

what stand for, a fiscal conservative social moderate just right of center is where the country lives. you have the 15% you are playing to but that's where the wheelhouse is. >> i'm pretty conservative on guns. >> that's libertarian as well, by the way. >> this is about government's relationship with people. >> i don't think the federal government should get involved in abortion, in gay marriage. i think, chuck, it's more general than even that. it's being conservative ideologically and, david, you are dead right. be conservative fiscally but temperamentally be moderate. like jeb bush. like ronald reagan. >> you get 70% of what you want

is that something your constituency will support? >> taxes and spending, then it will become easier. there is a purity test and pentup frustration conservatives have about how big government has gotten. >> if boehner and reid and all of them are smart on this, they would take advantage of the lame duck and force the old guys to deal with it. start anew. >> make no mistake this morning after the election, government is too big. the entitlement system is broken. we spend too much on national defense. we should be spending $2 billion a week in afghanistan. we can't keep spending the way we're spending but republicans need to learn one thing, like chuck said, 70% reminded me of ronald reagan's great statement. conservatives write it down.

just because i'm your friend 80% of the time doesn't make me your enemy 20% of the time. they need to underline that reagan quote and realize sometimes you have to compromise. >> if you look at the country there are more people who are pro life out there. and they hold on to that tight. >> just right of center that's where you get elected. >> and, by the way, do it in spannic. >> the keynote speak er julian castro. and we'll bring in "washington post" columnist ezra klein and marc morial. you're watching "morning joe" live from 30 rock. ♪

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i want to thank my friend and partner of the last four years america's happy warrior, the best vice president anybody could ever hope for, joe biden. >> 42 past the hour. joining us now columnist for "the washington post" and msnbcs policy analyst ezra klein, president and ceo marc morial. donny deutsch is with us along with margaret carlson and marc morial, the letter you are sending to the president this morning is on behalf of the national urban league, it's about income inequality. >> and jobs. >> and jobs. >> ensuring in the context of trying to solve the nation's fiscal problems that it's not done in a way that one exacerbates income inequality or creates a slower economy and

hurts the recovery that is in its earliest stages and so we believe the president should focus on jobs first. children and education second. community safety and gun violence third and what we're calling a fair approach to the fiscal problem. a fair approach to the fiscal problem. and for us that means you've got to combine revenue enhancements whether it's changes in tax rates or elimination of loopholes with cuts that are not solely focused on domestic programs. we have to expand this conversation. i think. >> ezra, let's talk about the conversation. what's going to happen the next four years under president obama in the second term? >> i think what's fascinating about the election last night, usually if you elect a president and made all these promises and then the question is can they get any of them through congress? will anything actually happen? with president obama's re-election you have affordable care which will happen.

you have the dodd walsh frank that will happen and you have tax increases which are currently law which will happen. we don't know what the final compromise after they happen will be but one way or another they're going to happen. so, in a funny way, obama's re-election last night, it guarantees, it locks in a level of legislative change that had already begun in the first term that is really unusual are for the moment after a presidential election, unusual to say with such certainty what will happen next and how the country will change. >> ezra, what's the deal that will be struck as we go to the fiscal cliff especially on the bush/obama tax cuts? >> i think the deal will be struck for a little while. >> happy news. margaret, are we going to plummet? >> well, you have the drivers. let's just go over and you have the kickers of the can down the road. i kind of agree with ezra, there is still this -- oh, we have to do it. we want to do it. we want to burst the boil. let's go on. early yerp in the program we

said how obama had no agenda because it was a negative campaign and he didn't have a positive program. the agenda is set for him. as ezra said, we move forward on these issues that remain and the house republicans are going to push, push, push, and i think in january -- some of it will be kicked down the road. >> and, by the way, since it's existing law, the president is in such a powerful position when it comes to the tax cuts for instance. the tax increases, for instance. >> if the president sits back and plays golf, the taxes are increased. >> i think the public also wants a concerted effort, less rhetoric and they want to see people work on a fair deal. and i think the bigger question is whether you will have some sort of temporary arrangement that leads to some discussion about a longer term arrangement. it's very difficult to not only sol of the fiscal cliff which means one thing while at the same time coming up with a long-term plan to fix the

deficit. so i can see a two-step process here. >> guys, the second term for obama i think you're going to see a guy who will have a little less of a chip on his shoulder. i think he's been humbled in his first term. i think, ezra, to your point, there are certain things in place that will guarantee movement, and i think you're going to see a guy that is more naturally and more comfortable and secure enough to reach across the aisle. i am very, very empowered about where i see the next four years going starting with a tremendously effective and a less divisive second term. >> i want to make a point, there's a really important point to make and i've been listening all morning, this idea of reaching across the aisle, it takes two to tango. the president -- [ applause ] >> i think it starts with the president. >> it starts with the president but the last few years were about obstructionism in the

congress. >> marc, let me just say, whether you believe that or not, that's not where you start the conversation moving forward. you just don't. >> but it's important. >> even that tone is not the right tone. because i think republicans right now, the smart republicans who want to build their own careers are going to get that. >> i am saying what many people are saying but isn't being heard and it's not only the president. the president has to lead. i've been a chief executive. i've not had to deal with a legislative branch, and there's got to be a movement in the middle so i'm saying today, yes, mr. president, reach across the aisle. with you i'm saying to all members of the congress, look, you have got to come to the table, also. >> ezra? >> we do a great job talk iing about how the president should act, how the president should strategize, what speech he should give. i reported on health care on negotiations and they did a lot of reaching across the aisle. and whether or not the tone, it was tough to find agreement even put aside the president.

the gang of six, you can't find more effort than the gang of six. i don't know if it changes now, one thing we need to do a better job of, does congress change? what does the new congress look like and will they come to the table and be open to compromise? >> up next on "morning joe" campaign rewind. stay with us right here in studio 8h. [ man ] ring ring... progresso this reduced sodium soup says it may help lower cholesterol,

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we'rwith questions fromtump sombing elections.kies do you know where your polling place is? maybe somewhere around my house. mine's just, right over that way. well you can find out exactly where it is using bing elections. it's a good day for politics. which way do you lean politically? conservative. republican. well, using the bing news selector you can find news from whichever way you lean. (together) social on this side, financial. which party is currently predicted to win a majority in the senate? the republicans? would you make a bet on that? no. are you chicken?

republicans, where are you? >> i have some bad news for democrats. >> okay, hold on a second. >> he's a republican. >> hold on. drink up. and then we have some bad news for democrats. is this legal, by the way? >> no. >> you ask that question in new york because mayor bloomberg is the mayor. nothing fun is legal anymore here. rapid fire, what did you learn, governor? >> i learned we'd better get our act together quick and the

president has to lead. >> michael? >> every month 50,000 hispanics turn 18 years old. what is the republican party going to do about that? >> better do something or it's adios. margaret? >> shout out msnbc analyst steven rattner. auto bailout saved obama. >> what did you learn? >> as always, i'm right. i guaranteed a victory for obama. and a shoutout to al and his parents. >> all right. way to go. what did you learn? >> when the election is over, the fiscalness begins and i can't wait. >> he also stares at car accidents on the side of the road. >> politics will rule the 21st century. >> mika, i learned we have reason to be optimistic, a lot of grace with the president's speech, mitt romney's speech, a lot of winners, a lot of losers last night but i'm hopeful. what did you learn? >> i think i've got the diplomatic solution between you and david axelrod and the mustache problem. so tune